Several times during the five-day meeting the Apostle would say to those in attendance, "Now you folk do not die on me here - for my track record of raising the dead in the USA is not very good."

Twelve issues purchased of the magazine Charisma promoted this SOUND THE ALARM-A NEW SCHOOL OF SIGNS AND WONDERS. The leader of the meeting shared that it cost $5,500 each time they placed a full-page ad in Charisma. A little arithmetic reveals the large amount spent to place these advertisements. (However, the usual cost is $6,200 for each page.)

One issue of Charisma quoted Apostle Bond as declaring, "I am building an army equipped with the ministry of Signs and Wonders to go to the world and openly on platforms demonstrate the power of God by healing the blinded eyes, deaf ears, crippledness, incurable pain and the dead corpses to rise-ALL INSTANTLY that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John 14:12-14)."

The Apostle Mel Bond, who is a co-pastor with his wife Donna of the Agape Church in Wentzville, MO, invited people to make a special effort to come. The reason given was "According to God's Word, God is waiting on the ministry of the Signs and Wonders to bring in the masses throughout the world and then the Rapture will take place. In this one week of schooling, I will teach and demonstrate (I Cor. 2:4-5) in the classroom how to see in the spirit world, how to feel God's anointing into physical bodies for instant miracles, and how to release God's last days anointing for Signs and Wonders. At the end of our week together, you will have learned to do the same." The appeal added, "Those who graduate will have the opportunity to go with me to third world countries, working with me, demonstrating God's Miracle Power."

Prospective students desiring to come to the School of Signs and Wonders had to fill out an application. One question asked was the date when they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.

When this reporter arrived at the Agape Church, some were walking around the sanctuary holding up their arms and chanting or "praying." Others were running and dancing in step with the big beat music being played over the loudspeakers.

Mel informed everyone that some of the students came from a number of states in the USA, but others were from Africa, England and other countries in the Middle East. The school began on Monday evening and had two daily two-hour sessions. It concluded Friday evening with "graduation and certificates of ordination" given to all who attended this new School of Signs and Wonders.

Mel taught repeatedly that when Christians die "they become angels." He added, "My dad who died is now one of my guardian angels. My dad as an angel has helped me accomplish three times more than I ever could without his help. Every Christian has a cloak he or she wears, and like our fingerprints each of them is different. The spirit world is much more real than the physical one."

At times when he was teaching, he would suddenly stop, close his eyes and then say someone right in that meeting had a growth and he was going to remove it as he prayed. Other times it would be a student's foot, hand, back, spleen or it could be someone having difficulty with their stomach. He would always say his spirit informed him of these afflictions or problems and he identified demons as the cause.

He did not touch very many because he wants others to do the "touching." But at one evening service he declared, "Tonight my hands will be Jesus' hands to be put on any of you who want me to do so."

At another service he kept his eyes closed to put on a demonstration of what he could do. A student would step up and be about 5 feet away from him. Mel would then tell how "in the Spirit" this person was an eagle, or another was an alligator, perhaps a rose and he would explain what this meant about the students' goals in life and how they could become more involved in the Signs and Wonders Ministry. At one time he said he saw a demon right over the head of a man and Mel commanded that demon to leave immediately. "There are both angels and demons in this room," he said.

Mel Bond defined an apostle as one "called of God to work signs and wonders." This apostle took a long time telling of the time in 1984 when he went to heaven. While there he felt led to go to a certain house and residing there was a friend of his who had died some years before. This man, whose name was Bill, came to him and they embraced. Mel told Bill how he was trying to erect a church building but heavy rain interfered with the construction. He asked Bill why his prayers were not answered.

Bill responded by saying that rain was not the real problem, it was because Almighty God had a project for Mel to tell all Christians around the world as to what their greatest problem was. Bill went on to inform Mel that "God told him to tell Mel to let Christians everywhere know that they must stop trying to get God to do something because of legalistic terms." However, Mel said he did not care to learn about that because his concern was when the rain would stop. Bill proceeded to tell Mel, "Do not worry about the rain. You are here to be taught what the Christians' greatest problem is and that is trying to do things by legalistic ways."

Mel told everyone Bill repeated that three times. However, Bill finally did add it would stop raining the next day. But the next day it continued to rain and this was a Sunday. While he was preaching, he stopped in the middle of his message and told the congregation he had made a trip to Heaven the night before and an angel told him it was going to stop raining! He admitted some of the people present were ready to get up and to walk out of that church service.

After the service ended, one man, who usually gave Apostle Mel a hard time, came to him and said, "See it is still raining!" But just as that man, who enjoyed being the pastor's critic, stepped out of the door it instantly stopped raining and the sun came out. He added that "It did not ever rain again until we finished the building project!" Mel Bond called this "A supernatural confirmation that God wants Christians to stop being legalistic!"

Bond acknowledged well-known TV evangelists and apostles would not ever tell people "that legalism is just doing religious things in order to obtain blessing from God." He proceeded to refer to his friend Dr. Kenneth Hagin of RHEMA Bible Church in Broken Arrow, OK, who did not come out of his house for three days. Finally, someone thought they ought to check on him. Mel then told everyone what Brother Hagin, another Signs and Wonders leader, had been doing. Mel said, "Brother Hagin had been sitting in a chair for three days and three nights. He was fasting and praying but not trying to get something FROM God. Rather, Dr. Hagin wanted to be used in a greater fashion FOR God. And he learned not to be legalistic with God as many Pentecostals were doing."

At each service Mel Bond would give several startling statements. At one he confessed, "I have performed the greatest miracles when I have sin in my life. You see most Christians would not know the Holy Spirit if He came right into their room dressed in a red jacket." One time he acknowledged he even had beaten a couple men almost to death when he lived on an Indian reservation!

At another meeting he told how he had been holding a Miracle Crusade in Nicaragua with more that 4,000 attending. Giving more details Mel went on to say, "Two ladies received their sight after I prayed over them. This caused a young mother to bring her little daughter up to the platform. The little girl had no eyes. She was born with sort of a white substance which filled her eye sockets. After I prayed, God recreated two perfect eyes in that little girl's head and the color of her eyes was brown."

He recounted another great miracle that took place in another country. A well-dressed lady who was blind came forward. Mel shared, "I prayed over her and right there she was given physical sight. It was the Queen of that country!" The next day Mel said he was on television recounting how God had used him to give the queen sight. He taught, "If you perform such miracles, you will find the press will hunt you up to interview you."

Later in the week he told that one night he heard footsteps in the middle of the night in their home. It was the devil himself who walked into the room. Mel was paralyzed and the devil was ugly. With descriptive terms he said, "The devil is a full-grown maggot."

But then he continued, "Just then Jesus walked into my room and He said, 'You are my child based on what I have done. Now you have my blessings.'" But just two weeks later the devil appeared again and this time Mel strongly rebuked him.

He seldom referred to the Old Testament during the hours and hours of lecturing. In fact he once said, "I am not saying the Old Testament is a bunch of junk but read the New Testament first and then you will understand what God wants."

Telling his life's story, Mel said he started preaching at the age of seven. Some years later he was filled with the Holy Ghost and for the first time spoke in tongues.

Ridiculing education he said, "People who go to school only get dumber. A Ph.D. really means a Post Hole Digger." Continuing on with the class that day he said, "I want every one of you to know that I am staying here until the Rapture so I can laugh at the devil. I have had heart problems but once I learned it was a demon I was not any longer concerned."

He said in another one of his Miracle Services there was a wife who had been praying that God would give them a baby. "But the demon in her told her she could not. So I saw an angel wrestle with the devil and she had her baby."

He shared another "miracle" when he was a soldier at Fort Riley. He had a car and tried to drive it up on a ramp to change the oil. But he drove over the edge of the ramp and could not move the car either forward or backward. "I got out of the car and lifted the entire car all by myself and this was like Samson carrying the gates of an enemy's city."

In explaining how you can be sure what you are preaching is true, "All that you need are three verses in the Bible and on them you can then build an entire doctrine. For example just ask for money but not from God," he said. "You demand money from the devil for he is the withholder."

These stories continued as he told how God sent a dove right over his head the day he entered the military. That was the Holy Spirit as it was at Christ's baptism. Assuring everyone present that what he taught was true, he said that up until the present time he has preached in 28 countries and more than 900,000 have been saved in his meetings.. He added that he was sure, "If the apostle Paul could trade places with me, Paul would do it immediately!"

The next day was set aside for everyone to learn how to do miracles. Step number one was that if you do not have love, God is not in it. Step number two was to always keep it simple. His third one was amazing for he taught, "There is no such thing as the wrath of God. Nowhere in the Bible, if it is translated correctly, does it say the wrath of God. It is always the wrath of the devil. Well-known evangelists are afraid this truth might come to be known by people so they keep it a secret!"

Proceeding to prove that God is only a God of love and not of wrath, he asserted that when it says in Genesis 19:24, "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven," it was not God who did that. Instead it was the devil. "You see children were burned up and God never would do such a horrible thing. It was the devil. In the Old Testament 'wrath' is used of the devil at least 600 times."

It was interesting when one of the students in response read John 3:36, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." Mel immediately responded that, "You must understand that this was what John the Baptist said ABOUT GOD, BUT GOD DID NOT SAY THAT ABOUT HIMSELF. We must always understand that is what somebody else said, but God Himself said He is a God of love, not wrath, and everything in the Bible shows that to be true."

Right then he stopped speaking and looked at one of the students for several minutes. "The Lord has told me you are having problems with your spleen ­- no, it is your liver because I can see right inside you."

In fact at one of his overseas recent meetings, a man came forward who had one leg which was several inches shorter. After Mel prayed and as everyone watched, the leg increased in length. Rehearsing something that happened several years before, he also did this for a six-month-old baby that had one leg a few inches shorter than the other one. The people just watched it actually happen and at the same meeting he also cured a man who had a hair lip. People saw new skin appearing on the man's face! He explained it is because Jesus said in John 14:12 that today's apostles will do greater miracles than even Jesus did!

Some of the "revelations" he shared at the School of Signs and Wonders went like this: "At the Red Sea, Moses had the water rolled back and it was 1700 feet high on both sides as the children of Israel marched across on dry ground...Think of how the children of Israel saw the whales and the sharks right in that wall of water."

"They have now found Pharaoh's chariot, which was made of gold and that is why it lasted 6,000 years, and also found the bones of 2 million Egyptians there in the bottom of the Red Sea!"

"You cannot build a church without miracles. God can give you and me a revelation to even be like Joshua and to make the sun stand still and just think how the press would desire to interview us if such a thing happened."

"If we neglect Signs and Wonders, it will be another 2000 years until Jesus comes again."

Again there were a few other things shared with the group: "When sickness comes on me I preach myself well."

"We must minister to the spirit by inspiration-to the intellect by organization-to the flesh by miracles."

"Hebrews 2:3 asks 'How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?' The word 'escape' means 'Rapture'"

"Remember Jesus said that when the Holy Ghost comes He will guide you into all truth. But you must also have the evidence of speaking in tongues and then you will be guided into the truths of God's Word."

Personal Observations by this Reporter:

At the final service, the apostle gave the students time to give a testimony of what they experienced. WHAT A SESSION THIS WAS! One lady, who had spent more time than anyone else lying on the carpet and shaking while shouting at the same time, told of a prophecy she had received about Mel and Donna Bond. She learned that Mel's vision he shared earlier in the week was going to be a reality. Yes, he would have 40,000 people in their church in a few years. One man related a dream he had while at this week's meeting which took him to Heaven, and when he came back to earth a ball of fire followed him. He said it was the glory of God and it made old things new - a junked car became a new one instantly and a burned out building was erected. And it looked brand new. Even a barren tree that he saw was suddenly filled with fruit as the ball of fire enveloped each one. All of this occurred right before this man's eyes. He told it certainly was the glory of God wrapped up in a ball of fire.

The oft repeated words at this meeting were "This is of the Holy Spirit!" But statements were made that were completely contrary to Scriptures. For example, Mel taught that when a Christian dies he/she immediately becomes an angel, or that God is only a God of love and not of wrath. Such teaching only gives credence that it is a false spirit. The Holy Spirit never goes contrary to the Bible!

Leaders such as Mel Bond or C. Peter Wagner, a Presiding Apostle who taught at Fuller Seminary, are among a number of individuals who have identified themselves as Apostles. Others identified with the Modern Charismatic Movement call themselves God's Generals. Paul in the New Testament rightfully called himself an apostle, for he had seen the risen Christ (I Cor 9:1). However, these Third Wave Ministers have no rightful claim to any such self-serving titles. It raises them high above pastors, evangelists or missionaries, as well as other faithful believers. Please note that this is done in sharp contrast to Paul's testimony in Acts 20:19 that he served the Lord "with all humility of mind and with many tears."

This new School of Signs and Wonders was almost completely based on EMOTION and EXPERIENCE. When everyone was asked to turn to such and such a chapter or verse in the Bible, it was usually taken completely out of its context. It is important to understand that when a verse is taken out of its context it is only a pretext and heretical teaching follows. A perusal of Charisma or Spread the Fire produced by the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, reveal many, many such conferences scheduled where those who attend are urged to "Soak in God's Glory" or "Catch the Wave!"

Those who follow such erroneous teaching are on the increase and we must beware of anyone who tests the Bible by their experience instead of testing their experience by the Bible. We must NEVER, NEVER put experience over and above the Word of God! We do not ADD to the Bible nor do we TAKE AWAY ANYTHING from God's holy, inspired. inerrant and authoritative Word.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20).

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